Luang Prabang Tourist Stuff

Last night we had a good dinner of Laotian food on a terrace restaurant overlooking the Nam Khan River. Nice but not overwhelming and with very slow service.

 This morning started with the 4 am drums, a little nap after that and then the monks walking the street to receive food for the day. The ladies and little boy are wearing a white sash for some reason.

 After breakfast, we climbed That Phousy, the highest point in town where there's a shrine, of course, on the summit. It was a few hundred steps up, fairly hard on layabout tourists.

 Naturally, this was the first day that there was a cloud in the sky since we left Bangkok last Tuesday. The surrounding hills were partly obscured in the mist but it was still nice to be up there. Anita is looking over the newer part of town that is not on the peninsula. It's a little busier in that section of town.

Looking over the other side, with the Mekong River in the background.

 This is the wat (temple) in the Royal Palace grounds.

 As we came down from That Phousy, the big hill shrine, there was a little wat that we visited.

 Inside there were images of Buddha, of course, and the walls were all painted with murals from the 1800s. There were some interesting scenes.

All of the murals that we've seen in southeast Asia either depict rural life or great battles where people are being beheaded or shot with arrows. When we were in this small wat, Anita bought a little wall hanging that will hopefully get home unscathed. She wanted to purchase something here where the proceeds are used to support renovations of the wat.

This is a front view of the wat on the palace grounds. The palace is now a museum since the last king was exiled to a cave in northeast Laos when the communist revolution occurred in 1975. Now Laos is a one party state called the Laos Peoples' Democratic Republic, although how much democracy there is may be open to debate.
There were no pictures allowed in the palace museum. Everyone must be conservatively dressed with no bare upper arms or legs and shoes must be removed at the door, as we do in almost every building we enter here. Anita saw one older tourist pull back a curtain from an area off limits and one of the museum staff guys actually slapped him hard on the back and told him to move away. The old guy was shocked and intimidated and did what he was told. Things are different here.
The museum was okay but not really that interesting. When we left, we had a light lunch at a JoMa Bakery here and then walked back along the Nam Khan River. We made a dinner reservation for tomorrow night at Tamarind, a highly recommended restaurant. Tonight, we're going out for western food for a change. There's any type of food you want in Luang Prabang. It's 4 pm and there are drums once again. Not sure why but there are drums at 4 am and 4 pm, perhaps prayer time. These are loud, deep drums that are audible for a long way.